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Could Your Inbound Marketing Be Doing More? Check Your Current Strategy at the Door

Inbound marketing revolves around relevancy. In the words of HubSpot, the inbound methodology’s primary goal is to “create and deliver content that will appeal to precisely the right people, in the right places, at just the right times.” That’s a lot of rights to, well, get right.

Attempting to run an inbound program without a well-researched strategy to guide the direction of your success is almost always the root of issues with your inbound marketing results. If your current marketing efforts aren’t working, you should always look to your strategy first. Start troubleshooting your inbound strategy using the following questions:

Do I Have Detailed and Accurate Buyer Personas?

Creating meaningful buyer personas is considered the first step in establishing a successful inbound strategy. In order to know the types and topics of content to create, you need to know the type of person that might be on the other side of the screen.

Though these are fictional representations, each one should form a complete picture of a distinct customer group. Make sure that each of your personas represents a valid customer in your target audience, and double check that you don’t have too many personas that you’re trying to target.

Better defining your buyer personas can be a total game changer for your inbound results. This added level of knowledge about your target customer can help you figure out what to write and where and when to present it in the buyer’s cycle.

Does My Inbound Strategy Integrate with My Other Efforts?

Inbound marketing was designed to align with and plug into all of your digital marketing endeavors. You’ll only be able to reach the results you’re after if everything comes together under inbound’s wing.

For example, your inbound strategy should connect with your social strategy, a key point where you can share and promote content. It should also perform alongside your SEO strategy, which ensures that you tap into the keywords and questions that your customers ask most often.

Finally, your inbound efforts should spearhead your conversion and email strategies, the completion of the cycle where leads convert into customers and start the process over again.

Have a straggler strategy that’s still operating on its own? Get it integrated into the inbound cycle and you’ll be on the right track to using inbound as it’s intended.

Pro Tip:

A collection of digital strategies that doesn’t work together is more likely to make your company appear inconsistent and disjointed. Integrating your strategies is a great time to make sure that your messaging and branding are consistent across channels!

How Long Has My Current Strategy Been in Play?

Inbound marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. While you should see small spikes in engagement and interaction, an influx of dream leads is an unlikely occurrence for the first few months after implementation.

Inbound works to build lifetime customers that will be well worth the time and money you put in. But major progress can take upwards of six months to as long as a year.

Our advice? Set your strategy up right and fully adopt the inbound methodology rather than using it as a one-time trial and you (and your customers!) will surely be happy with the long-term results.

Time to Restrategize!

Follow these troubleshooting steps and you’ll be en route to future inbound success through higher customer engagement and more qualified leads.

Stream’s Kick-Start Step

You can only reach your inbound goals if everybody’s all in! We recommend setting up weekly and monthly check-ins with your team for measuring inbound marketing progress in real time.

As you review your current inbound game plan, take advantage of Stream’s Total Inbound Marketing Checklist to ensure that your strategy is well-fortified to move forward. This free checklist gives you a start-to-finish view of the elements you need for a successful strategy. Get yours now to get started!

Go With The Flow

About Stream Co.

Stream Companies is a fully integrated advertising agency based outside of Philadelphia, PA. With over 20 years of experience, we're the largest ad agency in the region, offering a full service approach and customized ad solutions.

Stream Companies is a fully integrated advertising agency based outside Philadelphia, PA. With more than 20 years of experience, Stream is one of the leading ad agencies in the region, offering a full-service approach and customized ad solutions.